Collaborate Disseminate
There aren’t a lot of video game experiences we can easily recreate in the physical realm. You’ll quickly find that jumping on mushrooms in the real world doesn’t have nearly the same appeal as it does in Super Mario, and we won’t even get into the dangers of trying …read more
Continue reading HoloLens Brings Video Game Kart Racing to Life
It seems a bit unfair to pile on a product that has already been roundly criticized for its security vulnerabilities. But when that product is a device that is ostensibly deployed to keep one’s family and belongings safe, it’s plenty fair. And when that device is an alarm system that …read more
Continue reading Alarm System Defeated by $2 Wireless Dongle, Nobody Surprised
It’s cold outside! So grab a copy of the Hackaday Podcast, and catch up on what you missed this week.
Highlights include a dip into audio processing with sox and FFMPEG, scripting for Gmail, weaving your own carbon fiber tubes, staring into the sharpest color CRT ever, and unlocking the secrets of cheap 433 MHz devices. Plus Elliot talks about his follies in building an igloo while Mike marvels at what’s coming out of passive RFID sensor research.
And what’s that strange noise at the end of the podcast?
Direct Download (59.2 MB MP3)
Continue reading Hackaday Podcast Ep3 – Igloos, Lidar, And The Blinking LED Of RF Hacking
Many low-cost wireless temperature and humidity sensors use a 433 MHz transmitter to send data back to their base stations. This is a great choice for the manufacturer of said devices because it’s simple and the radios are cheap, but it does limit what we as the consumer can do with it a bit. Generally speaking, you won’t be reading data from these sensors on your computer unless you’ve got an SDR device and some experience with GNU Radio and reading the Nexus protocol.
But [Aquaticus] has developed a very comprehensive piece of software that should make integrating these type …read more
Temperature is a delicate thing. Our bodies have acclimated to a tight comfort band, so it is no wonder that we want to measure and control it accurately. Plus, heating and cooling are expensive. Measuring a single point in a dwelling may not be enough, especially if there are multiple controlled environments like a terrarium, pet enclosure, food storage, or just the garage in case the car needs to warm up. [Tim Leland] wanted to monitor commercially available sensors in several rooms of his house to track and send alerts.
The sensors of choice in this project are weather resistant …read more
Continue reading Speaking the Same Language as a Wireless Thermometer
‘Tis soon to be the season when resolutions falter and exercise equipment purchased with the best of intentions is cast aside in frustration. But with a little motivation, like making your exercise machine a game console controller, you can maximize your exercise gear investment and get in some guilt-free gaming to boot.
Honestly, there is no better motivation for keeping up with exercise than taking classes, but not many people have the discipline — or the pocketbook — to keep going to the gym for the long haul. With this in mind, [Jason] looked for a way to control PS4 …read more
Continue reading Gamify Your Workout with the Wearable Console Controller
If you own one of the ubiquitous RTL-SDR software defined radio receivers derived from a USB digital TV receiver, one of the first things you may have done with it was to snoop on wide frequency bands using the waterfall view present in most SDR software. Since the VHF and UHF bands the RTL covers are sometimes a little devoid of signals, chances are you homed in upon one of the ISM bands as used by plenty of inexpensive wireless devices for all sorts of mundane control tasks. Unless you reside in the depths of the wilderness, ISM band sniffing …read more
Continue reading Attack Some Wireless Devices With A Raspberry Pi And An RTL-SDR
While most of you reading this have broadband in your home, there are still vast areas with little access to the Internet. Ham radio operator [emmynet] found himself in just such a situation recently, and needed to get a wireless connection over 1 km from his home. WiFi wouldn’t get the job done, so he turned to a 433 MHz serial link instead. (Alternate link)
[emmynet] used an inexpensive telemetry kit that operates in a frequency that travels long distances much more easily than WiFi can travel. The key here isn’t in the hardware, however, but in the software. He …read more
If you wanted to name a few things that hackers love, you couldn’t go wrong by listing off vintage console controllers, the ESP system-on-chip platform, and pocket tools for signal capture and analysis. Combine all of these, and you get the ESP32Thang.
At its heart, the ESP32Thang is based around a simple concept – take an ESP32, wire up a bunch of interesting sensors and modules, add an LCD, and cram it all in a NES controller which helpfully provides some buttons for input. [Mighty Breadboard] shows off the device’s basic functionality by using an RFM69HW module to allow the …read more
Continue reading Radio Decoding Swiss Army Knife in a NES Controller
Internet of Everything is the way to go for home automation these days. ITEAD makes an ESP-8266 switch that IoT-ifies your appliances. If you still have an ancient, 433 MHz style radio switch system, they even make one that does WiFi and 433 MHz. But if you’re too cheap to shell out for the dual-mode version, you can always add a $1 433 MHz radio yourself. Or at least, that’s what [Tinkerman] did.
Aside from the teardown and reverse-engineering of the WiFi-enabled switch, [Tinkerman] also flashed custom firmware into the switch’s EAP-8266, and worked it all into his existing home …read more
